Am…musings

I just had another “shut the eff up” moment. I decided to wrap up the “cleanse” a few days early and move on to the more reasonable week two of the Body by Glamour diet. It’s the same principles, but additional whole grains and some sweets are allowed. There’s also a daily “treat” … one ounce of dark chocolate, frozen yogurt, a glass of wine. Homemade microwave popcorn was also on the list. Huh?

Even reduced-fat package microwave popcorn has a fairly long list of ingredients that don’t sound very healthy, including added color. The Glamour recipe … 3 Tbsp. popcorn kernels. Place them in a paper lunch bag. Fold the top of the bag down a few times. Microwave for two to three minutes or until popping slows (mine took less than a minute and a half.) Add your favorite popcorn topping (I’m going with a few sprays of Pam, a touch of salt and hot sauce … healthy hottt corn!)

I was a bit skeptical of the whole paper bag thing and of popping the corn without any fat, but it totally worked! And it has to be a ton cheaper and much healthier than the packaged variety.

St. Louis experienced its first “real” snowfall of the season this week – about five inches on Thursday. I decided it was the perfect occasion to try my hand at a something I’ve never made … vegetable beef soup.

We have a family recipe … my grandma used to make oxtail soup (yes, as in from the tail) and now my dad makes it. It’s very tasty, but I’m thinking me making it will be the end of me eating it … you have to pick the meat from the tail, and I can be a bit squeamish when it comes to stuff like that.

My friend Kelly, who is an awesome cook, brought me some amazing vegetable beef soup when I was recovering from my first surgery in October and kindly shared the recipe. It’s very easy to make and perfect for a cold day.

Kelly Gregoire’s Beef Soup
Olive oil
1 beef soup bone (with a little meat on it)
½ pound of beef (rump or sirloin roast) in one big hunk
1 small bag of frozen mixed veggies with lima beans (I actually used two bags)
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 -15 oz can tomato sauce
6 beef bouillon cubes
9 cups water
½ cup quick barley
Salt and pepper
1 Tbsp. garlic powder

• Pour a little olive oil into a large stock pot and heat over medium heat.
• When the oil is hot, add the soup bone and beef and sear one side until brown, then turn the meat to sear other side while adding onion and raw potato; stir frequently until the veggies get a little sear themselves.
• When meat is brown on both sides, add tomato sauce, water, bouillon, garlic, salt and pepper.
• Bring to a boil, then add the frozen veggies.
• Bring to a boil again, then add the barley.
• Simmer for about an hour.
• Remove the meat and bone out, cutting the meat in small pieces and adding back into the soup.

Makes 8 to 10 servings

I served it for dinner and dominos with the neighbors last night. A simple tossed green salad and fresh baked bread rounded out the meal. Bread from scratch is actually something still haven’t made. This was frozen Rhodes dough, which I highly recommend.

For dessert … piping hot baked apples with cinnamon ice cream. The ice cream was fantastic, but if you skip it, the apples are very tasty and healthy as they have no added fat and only a touch honey for sweetness. The recipe is here on Mother Rimmy’s Cooking Light Done Right.

I’ve been experimenting in the kitchen lately, which is really unusual for me … so unusual, that I began pondering why.

Last spring I blogged about cooking for the first time when I was 9 years old and my dad poking fun of the not-so-tasty outcome. Ever since, I was reluctant to stray from a recipe and its exact measurements. As silly as it sounds, maybe sharing that on this blog was cathartic for me and that’s why I’m cooking without my net. Another theory … bringing the herbs inside this fall may have forced me to be a little creative to use them up.

Ultimately, I think those two things may be contributing factors, but that the main reason is one of the great loves of my life … Google . I search recipes for specific dishes, as well as recipes including ingredients I have on hand. And instead of being locked down by one recipe in a cookbook, I can glance at several recipes, using them for inspiration and guidance, but not as gospel.

Tonight’s concoction – homemade croutons.

We had Christmas dinner last weekend because my uncle, the Christmas chef, and his family are out of town tomorrow. Without plans or the need to cook the traditional meal (that I really don’t like – sauerbraten and potato pancakes – yuck!), my parents and I decided to splurge with steak and crab legs for tomorrow. I’m in charge of sides – loaded baked potatoes, sugar snap peas and salad. I had some nice leftover bread that I hated to pitch and decided homemade croutons on our salad would be a nice touch.

I Googled “crouton recipe stale bread” because that’s exactly what I had on hand, and then scanned several recipes, picking the directions and ingredients I thought sounded best.

The only problem with not following a recipe is that it’s sort of difficult to share. But here’s the general gist … and I imagine I’m pretty much the only freak that follows a recipe to a T anyway.

Homemade Croutons
Stale French baguette or other artisan bread
Olive oil (roughly 2/3 cup for 4 cups of bread cubes)
Spices to taste (I used garlic powder and fresh thyme)
Sea salt
Fresh cracked pepper

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

Slice the bottom crust and any really hard pieces off the loaf.

Cut loaf into cubes and place in large bowl.

Whisk olive oil and spices (not the salt and pepper) together in a smaller bowl.

Drizzle spiced oil over bread cubes and toss well.

Spread bread cubes on cookie sheet or 9X13 pan.

Sprinkle with salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Check and stir the cubes every 10 minutes, but the baking time will depend on how large your cubes are and how saturated they are with oil. Mine took about 30 minutes (they won’t brown, but should be crisp on the outside and fairly chewy on the inside).

I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a bit of a “Martha,” but my favorite projects, recipes, etc. are those that look or taste impressive, but really aren’t too much work. Before this year, I would have completely scoffed at making a pumpkin pie from a real pumpkin … rather than from a can. But this was the year I finally planted a garden and as I mentioned in the “seed” post, I felt like my homegrown pumpkins deserved a more fitting end than the trash.

“A Googling” I went, and found this helpful site that gave a very detailed, step-by-step guide for making a pie from fresh pumpkin. Was it as much of a pain in the tooshy as it sounds? As I was making it, I thought … well … absolutely, yes it was. But honestly, in hindsight, it wasn’t at all difficult. It just required an extra hour or so and some extra dishes (stove-top steamer, food processor, utensils).

Sure … extra time isn’t something many of us have. And who likes extra dishes? But then again, the results were pretty amazing. I think partly because the recipe on the site is good, but this pie also tastes fresher and better … brighter is another words that comes to mind … than one from a can. The pumpkin itself is beautiful after it’s been cooked and processed … especially when you see how gross the pumpkin looks in the can.

Will I do it again? Sure, but I think only with pumpkins from my garden … if I had to buy a pie pumpkin, I think I’d just get a can instead (or my neighbor is a Aldi’s shopper and they have a pretty amazing frozen pie). And, of course, it would need to be at a time when I wasn’t in a huge hurry … like say when prepping for a holiday meal.

P.S. For those of you that don’t like pumpkin pie, I recommend you try a slice warm from the oven or warmed in the microwave for 15 or 20 seconds. I’d hated it for 38 years, but tried the Aldi’s pie I mentioned above warm from the oven. It was delightful, and now I’m a pumpkin pie fan.

Yes … I’m a little behind the times. Because I like to decorate with pumpkins in the fall and keep my decorations up through Thanksgiving, I don’t carve most of them. I usually just pitch them after Turkey Day, but because I grew them in my new garden this year, the trash didn’t seem like a fitting end for some of them.

I say “some” because of the nasty worm issue that you may remember. Thankfully, my tactics for de-worming and preserving the pumpkins worked … all but one of the little orange guys I saved made it through and hit the trash just a few days ago. And the “some” I didn’t pitch were two that actually made it out of the garden without worms.

Although I tend to be a bit of a princess, I enjoy digging in to clean out the pumpkin “guts” (I guess from years of carving pumpkins with my dad as a kid), and I couldn’t resist cutting into one of survivors the minute it finished its decorating tour of duty.

Even though they were smaller pie pumpkins, there were lots of seeds for roasting. I found a few recipes on the Internet. This one suggested boiling the seeds before roasting them.

I was pleased with the crispy result, although I waited to salt them until after boiling so that I could add some different spices like garlic pepper.

I still have one pumpkin left. It just seems crazy to me to go through all the trouble of messing with the flesh when I can buy a can of pumpkin, but I may try a pumpkin pie just because it makes me smile to think that I actually grew something I can create a pie with.

Kathy, the mother of two of my favorite people … and an amazing person herself, is an awesome cook. Her daughter (one of the aforementioned favorite people) brought this great dish to a dinner party a few years ago. I have since made it for a few occasions at work. Our annual Thanksgiving Potluck was last week and a few coworkers requested I make it again.

I love it because it’s yummy, very cheap and so easy. Open two cans, a box, melt some butter, mix and viola. This time I even put it in my beloved big mixer, which was way overkill because it’s so simple to mix.

Cornbread Casserole

½ stick butter, melted
1 can creamed corn
1 can whole kernel corn
1 packages Jiffy cornbread mix
Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)
Green, red or jalapeno pepper (optional)*

Mix melted butter, both cans of corn and cornbread mix together.

If using peppers, dice into very small pieces and add to taste (with jalapeno, remember the heat is in the seeds, removing them all yields very little spice).

Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

If using cheese, scatter on top about three minutes before removing dish from oven.

*I tried finely sliced green onion (green portion only) this time and was pleased with the results.

Betty (as in Crocker) rarely lets me down. Her recipes aren’t exotic or fancy, but when it comes to the basics, I think her cookbooks and recipes are among the best … except the blueberry muffins. Her recipe calls for a streusel topping that probably isn’t complicated to make, but just seems like a hassle on a lazy Saturday or Sunday morning. Without the topping, which contains nearly all of the recipe’s sugar, the muffins are tart and nearly tasteless.

So this morning I went a-Googling for something better. I’m a fan of light cooking so searched for “Cooking Light blueberry muffins.” I found a Cooking Light community forum and a recipe posted by KCSoccer from Susan Purdy’s Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too: Two Hundred Luscious, Low-Fat Cakes, Pies, Cookies, Puddings, and Other Desserts You Thought You Could Never Eat Again.

The recipe was easy to prepare and tasted great. It also included an option for baking it in a square pan, which was fantastic because I hate washing muffin pans with a passion.

Old-Fashioned Blueberry Muffins

1 large egg
1/2 cup skim milk — or 1%
1/2 cup nonfat vanilla yogurt
3 tablespoons canola oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour, unsifted (can substitute wheat flour for ½ the amount)
1 tablespoon — plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
Granulated sugar

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 400 degrees.

Coat pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, yogurt, oil and sugar.

Set a strainer over the bowl and add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir and sift the dry ingredients onto the egg mixture, then stir just to blend. Don’t overbeat.

Fold in the berries.

Divide batter among 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle tops with a little sugar.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tops of the muffins are well risen and golden brown, and a cake tester inserted in a muffin comes out clean.

Cool muffins in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes.

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Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 163 Calories; 4g Fat (22.3% calories from fat); 4g Protein; 28g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 16mg Cholesterol; 243mg Sodium.

NOTE: This recipes works equally well as a coffee cake baked in an 8×8 (bake 25 to 30 minutes).

The house filled with the sweet, spicy smell of pumpkin bread emanating from the oven around 3 p.m. yesterday. I was making Halloween dinner for the Kit Drive clan … Trader Joe’s style. Pumpkin bread … topped with homemade cinnamon whipped cream … from my free bag o’ groceries was our delicious dessert.

As I mentioned, when I went to claim my prize I did a little shopping. While perusing the cheese section an intoxicating smell grabbed my attention and I was drawn to the sampling area. An amazing stuffed pork tenderloin awaited … after a taste and a glance at the simple recipe, I knew it would be dinner for the neighbors.

My free groceries included organic penne pasta and an incredibly tasty puttanesca sauce that I didn’t have to doctor a bit, unlike other jarred sauces. Plus, the ingredients were real … free of any preservatives or high fructose corn syrup.

T.J.’s frozen French-cut green beans mixed with butter, garlic salt and sautéed sliced almonds and a loaf of French bread completed the dinner. It’s the perfect dinner party or date night fare because it looks complicated, but was fairly easy to pull together … and it was yummy.

Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

Pork tenderloin (marinade overnight, see below)
1 jar T.J.’s Roasted Red Pepper Tapenade
¾ cup grated parmesan

Slice tenderloin* nearly halfway through.

Mix antipasto with ½ cup parmesan and stuff inside cut tenderloin.

Sprinkle top with remaining parmesan.

Roast at 350 degrees until internal temperature reaches 160 (begin checking temp at about 40 minutes, based on size); let rest before slicing.

*The sample I tasted was made from a garlic herbed tenderloin. At T.J.’s, it wasn’t large enough for my crowd so I decided to attempt it on my own. I drizzled olive oil over the pork; sprinkled it with dehydrated garlic, onion, cracked pepper and Kosher salt; and wrapped it in plastic wrap overnight. It was good … although maybe not quite as tasty as the T.J.’s offering.

My friend Kelly gave me a Taste of Home magazine to peruse after my surgery. Being the Martha that I am, a pretty pumpkin cheese ball caught my eye and I decided to make it for the Halloween Happy Hour at the office.

It’s not pumpkin flavored, but rather a tasty mix of chive cream cheese, sharp cheddar and cayenne pepper, among other things. And it wasn’t too tough to make, although shaping it into a ball was a bit messy.

And the pumpkin shape was a little tricky, but not impossible. A completely non-serrrated knife is key.

Here’s the recipe — http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Pumpkin-Cheese-Ball-2.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not one to stray far from a recipe often. However, sometimes, necessity is the mother of invention. A fermented jar of artichoke hearts led to a yummy concoction at a recent office happy hour at a coworker’s house.

When I popped the top of the previously opened artichoke jar, about a half-inch of fizz formed at the top. While the artichokes smelled fine, a taste test by a generous coworker confirmed they were no good. I had mixed all the other ingredients and we didn’t necessarily have a ton of snacks so the pantry hunt was on for something else to add to the dip. We settled on black olives. After a taste test, we declared it a success.

OLIVE DIP

1 cup mayonnaise*
1 cup parmesan cheese
1 can olives, drained and quartered

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine all ingredients.

Place in a small oven-safe casserole dish.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Serve on Triscuits (I love the Olive Oil and Cracked Pepper variety)

The original dip, which was a yummy staple of holiday celebrations when I was a kid, calls for a can of artichoke hearts. I think a combo of olives and artichoke hearts would be delightful too.

*I usually substitute light mayonnaise in recipes, but because this is baked I use regular or a two-thirds combination of regular to light.